Critics aim to unveil docs' fees

Local surgeons pocket big payments from medical companies

New public disclosures are shedding light on doctors' financial ties to medical products companies, including seven-figure payouts for some local surgeons.

New public disclosures are shedding light on doctors' financial ties to medical products companies, including seven-figure payouts for some local surgeons.

Three orthopedic surgeons affiliated with Rush University Medical Center were paid about $2 million each by Indiana-based Zimmer Holdings Inc. last year, according to the company's Web site. A handful of other area doctors received several hundred thousand dollars each this year from medical-device makers, company disclosures show.

Zimmer and four other orthopedic companies began disclosing doctor payments last year as part of a settlement with federal prosecutors who alleged some payments were illegal kickbacks. (Nobody has alleged the payments to local doctors were illegal.) Now Washington lawmakers aim to shine an even brighter light on the issue by forcing all drug and medical-device companies to publicly report the billions of dollars they collectively pay doctors for consulting work.

Two U.S. senators sought details this month from organizers of a large conference for cardiologists about funding they received from North Chicago-based Abbott Laboratories and four other heart-device makers.

"It's in the best interest of these companies to put this information in the public and show the world they've got nothing to hide," says Allan Coukell, director of policy at the Boston-based patient-advocacy group Prescription Project.

The payments show the degree to which companies rely on physicians to help develop and promote products. They also embolden critics who want full transparency.

Zimmer and the other companies paid $310 million in fines last year to settle charges that they violated federal anti-kickback laws by paying some doctors simply to use their implants rather than for consulting services. The company admitted no wrongdoing, and no doctors were charged.

Local surgeons who received large amounts say the payments included royalties for products they helped design. There's a difference, they say, between product design and doctors who received consulting fees for doing little work, as investigators alleged.

Richard Berger, a surgeon at Midwest Orthopedics at Rush who received $2.2 million from Zimmer last year, says some of the increased scrutiny is unwarranted. "I think 99% of what the implant companies have been doing has been completely legitimate," he says.

Dr. Berger helped Zimmer design knee and hip replacements for women. Such collaboration is vital for innovation, he says. "It's the doctors using the devices who are coming up with good ideas," he says.

Dr. Berger says his 2007 Zimmer payment included three years of back pay. He adds that he makes far more money per hour doing surgeries; until this year, he spent about a third of his time on consulting work while performing 700 surgeries a year.

Two of Dr. Berger's colleagues who each received $1.9 million from Zimmer last year did not return calls seeking comment. Both of their Web sites disclose that they accept industry payments.

A Zimmer spokesman says the company won't discuss payments to individual doctors.

Wayne Goldstein, a Morton Grove orthopedic surgeon who received at least $425,000 this year from one device firm, says he has spent 25 years designing products with the industry. "I intend to continue my work," he says.

Henry Finn, a University of Chicago hip and knee surgeon who works at Weiss Memorial Hospital on the North Side, was paid at least $600,000 this year by Indiana-based Biomet Inc. He designs implants, including a reconstructive-knee system that bears his name. "I've enjoyed my development relationship with the industry," he says.

Abbott did not return calls. But it signaled its stance in an April letter to regulators detailing hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to doctors in Minnesota, one of four states with a disclosure law.

Abbott wrote that disclosing such information "would adversely affect Abbott's relationships with its contractors and consultants and allow competitors to gain a business advantage."